Impact on business models and customer experience

Impact on business models and customer experience

It is clear that disruptive technologies have the potential to significantly change the underlying economics of specific business processes. Disruptive technologies are affecting both the operating models and the ways in which media companies serve their customers.

Related content

Building an operational advantage

Media leaders are using disruptive technologies as a way to drive improvements in operational performance and to become more efficient businesses, whether that means changing the front office or the back office and probably both.

Decision-makers at media organizations say that marketing platforms, data and analytics (D&A), mobile devices/applications and digital payments and currency are having the most impact on how they run their operations. It is worth noting that all 13 technologies presented to respondents are having a notable impact on the way media companies are running their business operations. Even the lowest-ranking technology – robotics – was cited by 62 percent as having a “moderate” to “significant” impact on business operations (see chart below).

This indicates that decision-makers at media companies realize that disruptive technology is a business imperative, but many are finding it difficult to pinpoint exactly which disruptive technologies represent the biggest or most important opportunities or threats to operations of their companies. As such, many of them might be casting a wide net while they assess the potential implications and/or applications of these various technologies.

Impact on business models and customer services

Disruptive technologies are also causing fundamental changes on customer experience. In the past, consumers were detached completely from the content creators and providers. Increasingly, we’re seeing brands interacting with their consumers in real time. Companies can also track precisely what people are consuming. They can tell what types of TV shows, movies and articles they’re consuming, when they’re hitting the pause button, which paragraphs they’re skipping over. This is providing companies with a tremendous amount of data that can position them to better target customers and provide greater customer value.

Disruptive technologies are changing the manner in which media companies are servicing their customers and the biggest impacts are in the areas of supporting customers more effectively after purchase, monetizing products or services differently and marketing to customers more effectively (see chart below).

Hedging their bets

Making strategic investments in the right disruptive technologies can provide a company with a significant competitive advantage. One of the challenges in a business environment in which technological advances are being made at such a rapid pace is that leaders at media companies have a wide range of technologies to track and understand.

Leaders of media companies that are generating strong revenues know their current models are being disrupted and that they need to make changes. Unsure what the industry will look like in 12, 24 or 36 months from now, many media executives are making scattered investment choices in order to protect their companies and their market share over the long term.

It is also worth noting that to an extent, investments are really a trailing indicator of the emergence of a disruptive technology, since before investments can be made, companies must first go through the process of monitoring, identifying and building a business case for a given technology before actually deploying dollars toward those technologies. With that in mind, we need to be mindful that the investments being made by media companies today show you where these organizations have built their plans.

Most media companies are casting the net rather broadly, with a majority reporting that they are investing in a number of different technologies, with the most common being mobile (69 percent), cloud (68 percent), social media (61 percent) and D&A (60 percent).